Colours

On the day her mother died, the sky had been a bright, cheerful blue. Luna remembered this because she'd never seen something so wonderful, a colour so intense you could lose yourself in it....

("What are you doing, Mummy?"

The woman looked up and for just a moment, her hand slipped. "Luna, get away!")

---

Luna Lovegood is eleven and she doesn't have any friends. She doesn't seem to notice, either. She is living in her own world, a world of magic and fairies and endless blue skies.

(There is a strange girl in the dormitory, a strange girl with a distant smile. She never talks to anyone unless they ask her a question, never sees anyone, even, or at least it looks that way. The only thing she seems to care about is the blanket she always has with her. Her mother gave it to her, she says, and her smile seems even more distant when she looks at it.)

Then one day, someone rips it to shreds. From that day on, she never smiles again, but her sad looks are just as distant.)

---

"Let me go, Percy, I can find my own seat!" When the girl enters her compartment, Luna stares, because something is different about her. In the moment when their eyes meet, she sees something sad in the other girl's eyes, and thinks this is how she must look to the outside world.

Her hair is red, not the same colour as that sky, but just as bright, and Luna wants it even more.

("Is this a conversation? Because I'm not very good at having conversations, you know. I never had any friends to practice them with."

The girl (Ginny, her name is) blinks. "Well, that's all right. I don't either, really. I only have my brothers, and they don't really pay attention to me any more."

"Do you? I don't have any brothers or sisters...I think it might be nice to have some."

"If you met my brothers, you wouldn't say that. I'd much rather be an only child." She smiles. "I think this is a conversation, don't you?")

---

Luna is twelve, and she only has one friend, but one is enough for her. Sometimes they are serious, and sometimes they are silly, but Ginny is always red, and she wouldn't have it any other way.

("Your dad publishes the Quibbler? Really? I like that magazine, it's so funny."

Luna opens her mouth to protest, then closes it. "It is funny," she admits, smiling. "But funny things can be true too, you know."

"Do you actually believe the things in here, then?"

"Well, if I didn't, who would?")

---

Luna is thirteen, and she has a friend, but that friend isn't really around any more. Luna can't really blame her. She was never much of a friend to Ginny, so it makes sense that Ginny would decide to be not much of a friend back.

She keeps the red in her heart anyway, because maybe Ginny will return.

(A group of girls, the kind who constantly block up the hall with their chatter.

One smiles almost ferally. "Don't look now, but there's Loony Lovegood."

"I hear she was dropped on her head as a baby."

"I hear she was raised by trolls."

Laughter. But there is one girl who does not laugh, the one girl in the centre surrounded by others. Finally she manages a tentative smile. "Yeah...")

---

Is it strange that in three years at Hogwarts, she never really noticed Harry Potter? Maybe not; it isn't like she noticed anything else. But even after she starts to watch things, he never seems that interesting. Fame is boring; it is the unnoticed that catches her imagination.

And then she looks into his eyes, and she can't look away. Maybe it's the sadness (which she understands, because she feels it too) or the anger (which she understands, even though she doesn't) or maybe that green you could just fall into, but they are simply the most beautiful pair of eyes she has ever seen.

("Got your eyes on Potter, Loony?"

"In a manner of speaking, I suppose...." The girl keeps staring at something in the distance. "He's very interesting, don't you think?"

"Yeah. Interesting." The other girl snorts. "Well, you'd make a great couple. A sociopath and a nutter. Love at first sight."

"I think you might be misusing the word sociopath." She continues to follow the figure with her eyes, staring intently at something in his posture that no one else can see.)

---

It is late, though not quite past curfew, and Luna sits outside the entrance to the Ravenclaw common room, waiting. Perhaps this time someone will let her in.

"Luna? What are you doing out here?"

"I'm waiting for them to let me in. For some reason, no one seems to want to tell me the password."

Something in Ginny's countenance hardens, and she swallows painfully. "Yeah? Well, I'll wait with you."

"All right." But apparently, by "wait", Ginny meant "wait until a Ravenclaw walks by so I can hold him at wandpoint and force him to tell you the password". She appreciated the effort, anyway. "Thank you," she said, and began to close the portrait--

"Wait."

Luna cocked her head at Ginny questioningly. "What is it?"

Ginny stares at her for several seconds. "Why aren't you angry?" she asks finally, desperately, as though the question is killing her slowly from within. "How can you just--just forgive people like that?"

Luna smiles. "It doesn't matter that much, really. I can always find somewhere else to sleep."

She knows Ginny was asking about herself, but she couldn't answer the real question, couldn't find the words to say that Ginny was so vivacious, so intoxicating (so red), that Luna would have forgiven her anything, just as long as she came back.

("So have you had a good term?"

"Oh, it's been all right. A bit lonely without the D.A. Ginny's been nice, though. She stopped two boys in the Transfiguration class from hexing me the other day....")

---

It calls to her, the veil, with a voice so foreign and yet so achingly familiar. She can see it clearly now: she doesn't have to look for blue anymore, because blue is behind that veil. The search is finally over, and now she can rest in peace. She reaches for it--

"Let's go."

The voice startles her, and she realizes there is something else she has to do. This will have to wait.

("...anyway, it's not as though I'll never see Mum again, is it?"

"Er, isn't it?"

"Oh, come on, you heard them, didn't you? Just behind the veil...")

---

It seems as if they never spend time apart. They walk side-by-side whenever they can; Harry mock-gallantly offering to carry her books, Ginny rolling her eyes but letting him anyway. Luna would smile at the sight if it didn't make her want to cry.

She knows she's being silly. They were never anything more than her friends. But she still feels strange, like a missing puzzle piece under the bed, and when they lay beside each other and the golden sun shines on their faces, she hopes.

("How would you like to come to Slughorn's party with me tonight?"

"Slughorn's party? With you?"

"Yeah...we're supposed to bring guests, so I thought you might like...I mean...I mean, just as friends, you know. But if you don't want to...."

"Oh, no, I'd love to go with you as friends! No one's ever asked me to a party before, as a friend! Is that why you dyed your eyebrow, for the party? Should I do mine too?")

---

Nothing matters anymore.

She holds a slip of paper in her hands, meaningless condolences from some Ministry drone. It doesn't help. Just about the only thing that could help is for them to give her directions down to the veil in the Department of Mysteries and let her be.

She's wasted enough time holding back the blue. She needs it now; it's the only thing that can heal the gaping hole in her heart.

(The Healer smiled at the girl, a strained sort of smile meant to comfort. "Would you like a cup of tea, dear?"

"No thank you, Mrs. Healer," the girl replied politely, her large grey eyes staring into the distance. She was a quiet, staid sort of child, alternately seeming younger, then older than her age. "You don't need to worry about me, you know."

"Why, my dear--"

"We've only just met, so I'm not really your dear, I don't think. And you really don't need to worry about me. I know it wasn't my fault I came in at the wrong time. I couldn't have known that would happen." The words sounded wrong, as if she had learned them by heart and was simply repeating them. "Could I please go now? I answered the question right, didn't I?")

---

Ginny finds her first. "Luna, I heard about your dad--damn, what happened to you?"

She's aware she looks like a mess, but she hadn't known she was that bad. Would she have cared anyway? But the look on Ginny's face startles her in a way she didn't think it could, throwing her back into cold reality.

Ginny begins dabbing at the cuts on her hand with a feverish energy. She keeps her eyes on the task at hand, deliberately not looking at Luna, which almost bothers her.

"Why do you think blood is always red when it comes out of a wound? There is blue blood, you know, but you never see it outside your body. Do you know where else there's blue?"

"Where, Luna?"

"Behind the veil, of course. Didn't you see it?"

Ginny drops her hand in alarm. "Luna, you can't possibly be thinking of--Fuck." The distress and the worry are sharp in her face and she pulls Luna to her and holds her there. "Luna, I'm so sorry."

"Don't be silly. You didn't do anything wrong," she says, but they both know otherwise and Ginny doesn't let go.

(They are sprawled over each other in a tangle, Ginny's breath on her neck and her hands warm on Luna's skin.

"We shouldn't be doing this, you know," she says, but it's really just an idle musing, because she doesn't want Ginny to stop.

Ginny swallows. "I know," she says, and her fingernails dig into Luna's arms and it hurts, but Luna doesn't mind because pain is red and red is real.)

---

Harry comes over the next day, while she's absentmindedly dusting the bookshelves. Her mind is a million miles away, and then he's right behind her and it crashes back into reality.

"Hey." His brow is furrowed in concern. "You all right?"

"I'm fine," she says automatically, but there's a hitch in her voice that makes it perfectly clear she isn't. "It's--it's not as if I'll never see them again, is it?"

"No. But not now."

She blinks. Ginny must have told him. "I wasn't planning to," she whispers, and she hadn't been, but that blue--

"Good." He stands there for a second, staring at her, before opening his mouth. "Luna, there's something--something you asked me once, something I'd like to ask you."

"What is it?" she asks, but she thinks she might already know the answer.

In the moment of silence that follows, she's standing on the edge, but then he reaches out and pulls her back. "What are you afraid of?"

([excerpt from Business Wizards, June 1998, published anonymously]

In the months following her father's death, Luna Lovegood has--semi-inadvertently--transformed The Quibbler into a vaguely respectable (if radical) publication. Groundbreaking research on all kinds of topics can be found within its pages...you just have to siphon the Crumple-Horned Snorcacks out first. An amazing feat, to be sure.

But Lovegood tends to downplay her accomplishments. "Oh, it's not as good as it was with Daddy in charge, but then, it couldn't possibly be, could it? So I decided to do something a little different, and I think it worked rather nicely, don't you?"

Don't try to tell her differently, either. When she caught one Melinda Melba, star reporter for the Daily Prophet, speaking ill of the man in question, the resulting injuries landed Melba in St. Mungo's for several weeks--and would have landed Lovegood in Azkaban, had it not been for the combined prestige of her friends....)

---

This is Luna's happiest memory:

It's over, Voldemort is dead, and she's standing by the lake, trying to smile at her reflection, but she just looks sad.

Then Ginny comes up behind her, and she turns around and there's Harry on her other side. "Oh, hello."

"Hello yourself. What are you smiling about?" Ginny asks. "Besides the obvious, of course."

She looks back down, and to her surprise, she doesn't seem so sad anymore. "I just am, I suppose." She looks up and the sky is that blue and she thinks, maybe, it's Mum and Dad telling her she can stop looking for it now. And then--

And then Ginny kisses her.

(They're standing side by side, and the quiet stretches between them, understanding more than any words. For a while, she just lets herself be, but then, Luna finds her voice. "Do three broken pieces make a whole?" she asks quietly.

After a moment, Ginny starts to speak. "Well, we'll just have to find out, won't we?" she says bravely. Then she takes one of Luna's hands, and Harry takes the other, and together they walk off into the sunset.)

FIN